World's first quad port HDMI chip ready to go

Fujistu drives down TV prices with simpler HDMI hardware

With the increasing number of audio-visual gadgets in our living rooms that require HDMI connections to be seen to best effect, Fujitsu Japan has announced a hardware solution to help keep costs down.

The company's new chip is the first in the world to handle four HDMI ports simultaneously using only one chunk of memory. Although the technical details are a little obscure, the end result will be TV sets that can accommodate more HDMI-connected devices at lower cost.

Talking the same language

Among other things, that memory contains information about the display that connected devices need to read to understand how to communicate and what sort of image to deliver to the TV.

Current HDMI ports each require their own dedicated memory, which makes their manufacture more expensive than Fujitsu's package. Naturally, keeping the cost of HDMI-ready TV sets down leaves a little over to buy more game consoles, Blu-ray recorders and the like, so everybody wins in the end.